Saturday, June 1, 2019

June Ebola Update




















6/1/2019 - Per the latest WHO weekly outbreak bulletin, the 10 month Ebola outbreak continues unabated in DRC. It's up by almost exactly 30% in the last 21 days.

UPDATE: June 3 WHO Ebola Update:

'the new measures introduced in the past week, along with continued strong reinforcing of community messages, and intense application of proven public health measures, should confine the outbreak to the two provinces currently affected, and bring the outbreak to a close."
 
This happy gas from the UN, despite 118 known new Ebola cases, and an additional 61 deaths, in just the last week. I'd love to be wrong, but it sounds like someone is whistling past the graveyard here. Those new cases alone would be a significant outbreak. That many amidst all possible medical efforts, and nearly 130,000 vaccinations, points to them losing this battle rather decisively. Time will tell.

UPDATE II: London UK Guardian, June 4th:
"Aid agencies, infectious disease experts and the WHO say it will be very hard to bring this outbreak under control, even though they have had vaccines and experimental drugs from the outset.

There is almost no functioning state in much of eastern DRC and an almost total lack of basic services such as power, education, roads or healthcare. The authority of the government only extends to the edges of urban areas."
{This is 2014 redux.
WHO is saying in their published reports "We've got this", everyone else is saying "This sh*t's an out of control inferno!"

90 days later we had Ebola in Dallas.

This is also the first official acknowledgement that officially published numbers no longer reflect reality. You can now apply a Fudge Factor of 50% to all published numbers, until further notice.

That's admitting that things are a full-blown disaster.

Best start getting your sh*t together, people.
This one's going to blow containment. -A.}


The Good
They've vaccinated nearly 125K people, with an experimental vaccine that appears to confer >99% effectiveness against Ebola. (For the 1K or less people who contracted it anyways, don't worry, most of them are dead now.)

The Bad

1) Despite vaccinations, progressing at some 1000 per day, for a non-zero number of cases (currently it's something like 5% of all new cases), they have no effing clue where a given case originated, and thus no wild idea whom to vaccinate, or how to throw up a suitable containment ring around them, or how the virus got past them.

2) They are tracing contacts in 17 health zones. The problem with that is there are 22 health zones (think of counties) with active Ebola cases in the last couple of weeks. Imagine being missed by 17 out of 22 cars as you cross in a crosswalk, and you begin to appreciate why this is a problem.

In the five other zones (23%) where there is zero contact tracing, they have no idea what the disease is doing.

The Ugly

In this current outbreak, in 50% of cases, fever as a presenting sign is completely absent.
(Fever, we remind you, is how grade-school dropout customs screeners in 126 countries check people at the airports for Ebola before letting them in. Including our TSA wizards here in the U.S. It's really the only thing they can check that can be mastered by 80 IQ government employees worldwide. Sleep tight.)
Short of laboratory testing everyone (which they aren't and cannot do in nearly 1/4 of the Hot Zone in DRC), and a 40-day quarantine, cases will continue to multiply.
And they are.

Let's look at that over time, since we're at the 10-month anniversary of this outbreak today:

Index case      Aug 1
2 cases           Aug 1
4                      Aug 1
8                      Aug 1
16                    Aug 1
32                    Aug 3
64                    Aug 3
128                  Aug 31
256                  Oct 15
512                  Dec 3
1K                    Feb 24 
2K                    May 12
4K                    probably about Aug 1

That would be an 11 on the 34-point Scale Of Whether It's Time To Panic, with 34 being Global Extinction Event. And headed to 12 at about 100 new cases/wk, give or take.

And we repeat, as the virus doesn't kill overnight, the correct  death ratio number, we pound home, is not the WHO/Wikistupidia math-retarded posted lie of 65% of dead vs. infected, it's those dead now vs. number infected 21 days ago, which gives a consistent and far more reliable lethality percentage around 75%. Because it takes about that long to get it, and then die from it, on a rough average.

USAMRIID and CDC refer to that level of lethality as a "slate-wiper"; it erases populations.

And bear well in mind "surviving" Ebola means you now have it functionally forever, and get to suffer the sequellae of Post-Ebola virus syndrome. {TL;DR: You're still screwed, and life, as you knew it, is over. You aren't going back to your old life ever again. Short answer: don't catch it to begin with.}

Note that by the time it was confirmed as an outbreak this time, it had already doubled 4 times, meaning it probably started two to four weeks earlier, at minimum, but no one noticed until literally 20 people dropped dead with blood shooting out of all orifices. Nominally, on Day One. Proof of this is that it doubled two more times in the next 48 hours.
Growth slowed notably, mainly because the vaccine and ring vaccination slowed the brushfire down. At first.

And then the local superstition and ignorance kicked in, they started stealing bodies from morgues, burning Ebola treatment centers, and chasing the health teams out at gunpoint, and all hell has broken loose, probably never to be contained, because we don't have the 82nd Airborne in hazmat suits available to shoot idiots at gunpoint to get this back in the bottle.

You know this because it keeps escaping to neighboring health zones and provinces, having now moved some 100 miles outward.
It has surged notably since March of this year, both in terms of numbers, and affected areas. That is an ominous sign.

Bear in mind once again that this area is
a) equatorial jungle, literally right on the Equator
b) listed in all maps relevant as "ungoverned"
c) listed in all relevant maps as "armed conflict zone"

The UN and all local organizations are doing their usual Headless Chicken, thrashing about, but to little effect, and the literature continues to try and paint a happy picture, while ill-concealing their ultimate despair that they'll get ahead of this one.

It continues to be a slow roll-out compared to 2014, but is notably picking up steam.

For the record: The current outbreak in DRC is where West Africa was in mid-August 2014.
Six weeks later, Ebola got to the U.S.
{BLUF: You should start thinking that you've got maybe twelve weeks before it gets here. Again. It may take longer, or less time, or it may not make it here at all. But it looks like it's on the same trajectory, and we're all just one passenger flight away from doing this all over again.}

1000 vaccinations a day is great when you have 100 cases.
When you're working on 2200 cases and counting, and nearly 1/4 of the regions you need to be in are untouched by any effort, the horse left the barn, and you're just marking time on three sides while the whole show departs through the gaping holes in containment.

It's going to get much worse, much faster, probably in a week to a month, when cases start popping up farther afield, where there are no resources or testing, let alone contact tracing, and the percentage of cases with no clear infection chain will go from single digit percentages to mid-double digits rapidly.

And now comes unconfirmed word that we have a number of potential infected refugees in custody on the Southern border of the US. Nobody's saying they have Ebola, just getting all flustercated because they might. {Emphasis added for clarity. -A.}

My default answer is to ignore these reports until it's confirmed, because most of them are indeed false reports, so we'll wait and see how it pans out, as you all should.

But if it breaks out here, we have 11 BL-IV beds, max, to adequately contain that outbreak.
For reference, Mexico has zero beds.
I repeat, Mexico has zero beds.

If it breaks out south of the border, one case becomes 100 cases in about a month, tops, (probably more like a week to ten days) and then the flood of refugees coming here becomes a tsunami (actually, we're there now completely without a pandemic to drive it faster, so picture that when it gets turned up to 11). At that point, f**k a wall. The only way you stop that flow is AC-130s doing minigun sweeps of anything moving within 1/4 mile of the international border, which is going to be hard on the millions of people who already live inside that zone on both sides of the line.


So if Mexico gets one active case, you can cancel Christmas.
America (North, and particularly Central and South) becomes Africa at that point.
Ditto if we get more than 10 cases here in the U.S.

We saw what happens when people at the local big hospital tried to be Emory or Nebraska or The Vault at USAMRIID: it fails, and you knock a 1000-bed major tertiary care facility out for months, for the whole community.
And the virus doubles, despite your best efforts.

With EVD, close isn't good enough, and only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons.

I'm working, and have been, in level I and II trauma centers, and major high-volume ERs my entire career. More since 2014 than before, BTW.

And I'm here to tell you, by the numbers:

1) We aren't ready to deal with this, in any meaningful way, any better than in 2014
2) By "we" I mean any hospital in any city anywhere in North America, and
3) when, not if, this breaks out here, it's going to take out health care as you know it in every affected city, starting with the people who work in them, then patients and visitors. Hospitals will become abbatoirs, morgues, then ghost towns.
4) 911 responders (firefighter rigs and EMT units, and to a lesser extent, law enforcement) will become potential carriers to spread the disease back into the community.
5) anybody, anywhere, with whatever certifications, who tells you anything different is either lying out their ass at both ends, or doesn't know what they're talking about, and anything further they say can be completely discounted as utter bullsh*t from someone too stupid to live, or irredeemably evil.

Good times, huh?

That means no ER, no 9-1-1, no 50 other things people come to hospitals or call the police and fire department to handle. Trauma, heart attacks, strokes, diabetic emergencies, appendicitis, and the whole plethora of modern medicine.
Imagine the police not wanting to get within 20 feet of people on a stop or a call.
Car accidents will become morgue calls.

Because Ebola.

The Monster

The little filovirus in the masthead for these updates is magnified tens of thousand times, in pics that have been around since the mid-1970s.
A period at the end of this sentence would be a ball of virus that numbers 100,000,000 of them.
The number necessary to give you full-blown Ebola is one.

We don't know in what species Ebola resides between outbreaks. Anywhere. Ever.
We don't know how it gets transmitted from them to humans.
No idea whatsoever.

Flecks of infected blood from a human victim who has it can be coughed and sneezed 25', and may linger in the air for up to 10 minutes afterwards.
And that's only considered droplet precautions, because those particles are heavier than air, and eventually settle, unlike true airborne precautions, for something like TB, or pneumonic plague.

Your body won't care which it is if you suck in one of those droplets at the movie theater, theme park, supermarket, or mall, whenever you simply breathe it in anytime you walk within 25' of anywhere anyone has coughed in the last 10 minutes.

Have fun at WalMart, Target, the airport, a theme park, a movie multiplex, a ballpark or auditorium, and the supermarket then.

And before someone starts asking (again?!) about how to "deal" with this, by suiting up:
1) You need a 20-piece hazmat ensemble, a spotter to put it on and take it off, a metric fuckton of disinfectant and disposable items, including gloves, splash-proof goggles, gloves,  suits, gloves, hoods, gloves, booties, gloves, droplet barrier masks, and gloves.
2) One break in protocol will be a terminal error.
3) And potentially expose everyone you come into contact with to the virus.
4) And require you to start all over again getting suited up for, or deconned out of, any hot zone
5) Oh, and lest we forget, it's June, and the ensemble inside is hot-as-fucking-hell, and gives the average person maybe two hours' time before they're ready to pass out from heat stroke, before we factor in dehydration, claustrophobia, and sheer panic.
6) Did we mention that hot, tired, dehydrated, exhausted, and panicky people make fucktons of sloppy mistakes?
7) Did we also mention that one mistake can get you and everyone you love or contact killed?

So yeah, fuck the idea of working in hazmat gear. Professionals hate it. With all the resources mentioned above you'll never have.
You?
You don't stand a chance.

Proper protective equipment for Ebola, we repeat and belabor, is several lengths of military-grade concertina, warning signs, a shotgun and supply of buckshot, and small breakable containers with a suitable flame accelerant, for emergency decontamination beyond the perimeter.

Chance of Ebola sneaking up your driveway and into you behind such a perimeter: 0%.

Odds of seeing this material again before the end of the year: better than even.

Happy Summer, kids!
Now do you see why I don't want to bring this up any more frequently?

UPDATE: 116 Africans, including Congolese refugees, caught crossing Rio Grande
What could possibly go wrong?

UPDATE II:
I repeat for the record, as of June 5th, based on available evidence, and barring any changes in worldwide response,

this one's going to blow containment.

Get your preps in order.
When it gets out, if it's near you, it'll already be too late.

81 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would appreciate a follow up to this excellent coverage, thank you, in regards to the wogs on the southern border.

horsewithnonick said...

If I may ask, where have you seen the reports of infected refugees south of the border? I've seen this reported, but considered the source dubious at best. Corroboration on this point would be huge.

Aesop said...

Nothing to follow up on, it's just people getting worked up because of what the unwashed hordes flooding in might bring.

If there's a follow-up, it'll be Breaking News on five networks in about half an hour.

horsewithnonick said...

That is why I doubted the report I saw; a confirmed case at the border would be a disaster, and would mean that Mexico and points south are already involved in an outbreak are some level. The only thing worse would be if one or more government were trying to *hide* it.

Crew said...

It's time to nuke the Congo.

It was already time to Nuke the Congo in January 2019.

Sometimes you just cannot stop morons from killing us all.

Aesop said...

Right.
And all of West Africa.
And everything in between.
(Because we still don't know where the virus lives.)
What the hell, let's just nuke everything south of the Sahara (which turns out to be a pretty good insulator).
Oh, and shoot down all the airliners as well, which are why disease goes intercontinental in a matter of hours.

So, after you've nuked most of a continent 75% the size of N and S America combined, and shot down 10,000 airliners, then what?

China has swine and avian flu.
India has plague.
Do we start there next?
Mightn't China and India have something so say about being nuked?

I understand your frustration, but as H.L. Mencken wrote,
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Rethink.

Crew said...

There is a difference between Ebola and Yersinia pestis and the Influenza virus.

Our ancestors paid the price of Y. pestis and Influenza long ago so now the mortality rate is much lower. Also, we know what the reservoirs for Y. pestis are and we can control them. In addition, Influenza has no where the mortality rate as Ebola.

And while so-called 'Spanish flu' killed a lot of people it did not destroy Western civilization.

Ebola can.

Miles said...

Okay Aesop. 'Medical' advise requested here.

If this goes hot in the U.S

1 Will standard major city (+150,000 pop) provided water still reasonably be considered a safe source?

2 How long should a 'clean compound' plan on manning the barricades, quarantining anything outside the wire?

tweell said...

1. City water requires power and chlorine to provide you with clean abundant water. If shipping is curtailed for quarantine or because truckers are dead, no chlorine. If power plant employees are dead, no power. Care to wager your life that our government would inoculate essential people? My bet is that any vaccine would go to the rich and powerful instead.

2. 40 days after the last recorded death, at a minimum. Plus anyone who had the disease and survived is a carrier to some extent. Tricky, isn't it?

Old NFO said...

If, big IF, I remember correctly, the US has a total of 12 'certified' beds for Ebola like symptoms. Not nearly enough. And I noted that you didn't even get into the possibility of coming in via a major airport and the cross contamination/infection on an aircraft. Not that I'm trying to play Debbie Downer, but being an aviator, THAT is the stuff I tend to look at.

lineman said...

People will quit coming into work once the panic hits... People just don't understand how fragile our systems really are unless they have seen it with their own eyes or they dig deep and read up on it...Final answer don't be in a city when it comes here full force...

Aesop said...

@OldNFO,
Click on the hotlink to "11 BL-IV beds" in the post. ;)
It's 23.
Except they only staff 11.
(And it takes months to years of prep to up-staff the other 12.)
And 3 of the 11 are reserved for military casualties.
We broke that rule in 2014, so I'm willing to fudge the official 8, to an actual 11.
But that's as rosy as it gets.
Europe and Asia are probably less than that, and S. America and Africa have 0.
So maybe 20-30 cases, worldwide.

@Crew
Avian and swine flu aren't last year's flu.
Think Spanish flu.
The potential for another Spanish flu is out there.
Which wiped out millions in 1918.
(#2 killer, right behind WWI that year. And coming in just behind it were measles and mumps.)

You couldn't nuke all the virus in the world, with every weapon extant.
Ignoring the radiation levels worldwide afterwards.

Work it out for yourself.

https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/interactive/bomb-blast/

Tsar Bomba, most powerful thermonuclear device ever detonated, covers 31 mi².
So if you had 325,833 bombs with the yield of Tsar Bomba, you could do Africa.
We don't even have 60,000 nuclear weapons worldwide, and never had as many as 100,000 even at the height of the Cold War, all of them vastly smaller than Tsar Bomba.
The zone of destruction from the bombs we do have wouldn't cover even 10% of the continent, so you'd miss your target by a paltry 90%.
If just that simple mathematical reality can't beat the stupid out of the idea, I can't help you.

Fred ∆ said...

@ Aesop:
We don't know in what species Ebola resides between outbreaks. Anywhere. Ever.
We don't know how it gets transmitted from them to humans.
No idea whatsoever.


It's zoonotic in fruit bats and can be passed to duiker (small antelope), non-human primates and porcupines. In fact, a precursor to human infection is noticeable die off of antelope and primates, the sick ones being easier to catch for bush meat, the butchering thereof exposing humans to infection through cuts, abrasions and mucosa. Very similar to rabies and rodents in the US.

https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/index.html

There is an effective vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV. Maybe you should consider getting it now before Ebola Chan wigs you out completely.

Anonymous said...

Houston CERT teams participated in an exercise a couple of years ago that was POD for vaccine distribution. Participants got a call in the middle of the night to either simulate citizens lining up for vaccine or the workers handing out vaccine.

I didn't get to participate and didn't see an AAR, but I'm guessing "cluster fuck" would describe it.

One of the reasons I have the different 'merit badges' is to be included in things like that. Some lists have advantages.

nick

Anonymous said...

@fred, as I understand it, there are limited amounts of vaccine, and the production has a long lead time. If you could "go get it" I'm sure the lines would be L O N G.

nick

Robohobo said...

horsewithnonick - The reports of the 4 "immigrants' south of the border were on local Texas for about 15 minutes then disappeared. So I believe they are correct. They were held in the Laredo sector:

https://local2455.com/featured/congolese-migrants-monitored-for-ebola-along-the-laredo-texas-border-says-official/

Unknown said...

Aesop, the ten month timeline shows an exact doubling of cases. That seems speculative. I would think it would be more like 1, 2, 5, 17, 52 or some exponential progression. Are the actual numbers available?

Rick

Dan said...

If we were an intelligent species (we are not, merely a clever one) we would be
manufacturing the vaccine as fast as possible and we'd initiate a vaccination
campaign akin to the one that ended polio when I was in grade school. Meaning
that EVERYONE gets the vaccine even if it has to be given by force. But then again if we were intelligent we'd control our borders....which we don't.

Aesop said...

@ Fred⌂

1) Per your link:
"Scientists think people are initially infected with Ebola virus through contact with an infected animal".
The technical term for the emphasized phrase is called "guessing".

Scientists think man-made carbon dioxide leads to a faked rise in global temperatures.
They're full of shit too.

We (by which "we" I mean 6.4 billion human beings, inclusive) have no fucking clue in what species Ebola resides between outbreaks, nor how it is transmitted from that species to humans.
If you have a link to an actual scientific paper that documents something else, feel free to post it. It would be front-page science news, if only it existed.
It does not.

That's the difference between actual science, and the happy horseshit gladly dispensed by the fucktards at the CDC to credulous amateurs.
I had a few hundred posts on the topic in 2014, noting with some specificity the arrogance and incompetence of the CDC, from the top down. Those posts are still up.

You have the same internet I do: links to actual science, or it's horseshit.

2) Zoonotic: Pertaining to a zoonosis: a disease that can be transmitted from animals to people or, more specifically, a disease that normally exists in animals but that can infect humans.
If you can prove a zoonotic link of transmission from bats (or any other animal) to humans, there's a Nobel Prize in Medicine waiting for you in Oslo. Show your work.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
For reference, here's what actual science sounds like:

"Which reservoir species are responsible for maintaining Ebola transmission between outbreaks is not well understood (Peterson et al., 2004b), but over the last decade significant progress has been made in narrowing down the list of likely hosts (Peterson et al., 2007) (Figure 1). Primates have long been known to harbour filoviral infections, with the first Marburg strains identified in African green monkeys in 1967 (Siegert et al., 1967; Beer et al., 1999). Significant mortality has also been reported in wild primate populations across Africa, most notably in gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) populations (Formenty et al., 1999; Rouquet et al., 2005; Bermejo et al., 2006). The high case fatality rates recorded in the great apes combined with their declining populations and limited geographical range, indicate they are likely dead-end hosts for the virus and not reservoir species (Groseth et al., 2007). A large survey of small mammals in and around Gabon identified three species of bats which were infected with Ebola viruses—Hypsignathus monstrosus, Epomops franqueti and Myonycetris torquata (Leroy et al., 2005). Subsequent serological surveys (Pourrut et al., 2009; Hayman et al., 2010) and evidence linking the potential source of human outbreaks to bats (Leroy et al., 2009) lend support to the hypothesis of a bat reservoir. This, coupled with repeated detection of Marburgvirus in the fruit bat Rousettus aegypticus (Towner et al., 2009) and the only isolations of Cuevavirus also from bats (specifically Llovia virus [Negredo et al., 2011]), all support the suspicion that Chiroptera play an important role in the natural life-cycle of the filoviruses."

TL;DR: "We know it lives in bats. And lesser primates, until it kills them.
We have no idea if either is the actual reservoir source, or if it's some other species entirely. Nor do we know how it gets from A or B (or X) to humans, in any sense, nor whether the infected flesh of what species is the likeliest means of initial inter-species transmission and human outbreak. But we have some spiffy guesses, which may or may not pan out."

As Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up":
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4166725/

3) rVSV-ZEBOV is not available, except in the actual outbreak Hot Zone, and even then only for humanitarian reasons, because it's still entirely experimental and clinically untested. The only long-term data on any possible side effects is being gathered over the last 10 months.
It's only being used in DRC at all because doing standard double-blind testing in the face of a hot virus outbreak requires giving a placebo to half the people at risk of dying, which is medically and morally unethical, for everyone not a direct spiritual descendent of Dr. Mengele.
No one else may receive it, unless that someone would like to travel to the outbreak and volunteer.
(I'll pass, but if you'd care to, write and tell us how it works out.)

If you were half as smart as you've tried to sound on the topic, you'd have known all those answers before I delivered them.
Thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

I do this because I know what I'm talking about, and keep up fairly closely on the relevant details, and take particular care not to spread horseshit and guesswork, because it might get people killed.
You might wish to try that approach as well.

Aesop said...

@Rick

*I* typed in the 10-month timeline with doublings.
The Wikipedia folks have been doing a fairly good job of reposting the documented WHO numbers regularly (with hot links to the actual WHO report web pages for each update).
There's even a handy graph if you like pictures instead of numbers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018-2019_Kivu_Ebola_outbreak

Which, in point of fact, went
26, 76, 74, 100, etc.
1-20 were DRT on Day One, and 11-33 on Day Three, which kind of precluded observing the actual 1,2,4,8,16,32 numbers, unless someone looks at time of death on 33 Congolese death certificates.
Assuming anyone there had a watch, and could tell time.
Or count past ten without going barefoot.
I hope you get my point.

When or if we enter into past Standard African Practice, of flat-out Making Shit Up, and not counting 50-75% of actual casualties to make things look better, like they did every day in the 2014 outbreak, documented multiple times in plain sight, remains to be seen.

So for all values of "African-Supplied Ebola Outbreak Numbers", caveat emptor.

Unknown said...

Aesop, I get your point. Thanks for the reply.
Having witnessed the insanity of ancestor worship in Madagascar (which involves expending an entire annual income to exhume the dead then playing dress-up and partying with the ol bag of bones, then doing it again next year and every year following), I gotta say crazy beyond belief is du jour d' Africa. Which just might work in the favor of the rest of the world. I suspect the unreported cases is a significant percentage of observed cases.

Our part is to terminate all inbounds until Africa absorbs its own. And then some.

Rick

Anonymous said...

"In this current outbreak, in 50% of cases, fever as a presenting sign is completely absent."

That right there should be scaring the crap out of WHO, CDC and the European, Russian, Chinese and any other governmental entity remotely associated with the general health of their respective populations.

I also think it means that this outbreak has the potential to, in time, become the dreaded zombie apocalypse of many a dystopian novel, in real life.

I wonder if the recent new series "Outbreak" on HBO(?), I haven't watched it yet, so have no idea if it's even remotely factual) and the re-release of "Outbreak" on one of the other pay channels is a portend of things to come.

I wonder if this lack of presenting fever means that the virus has mutated? Of course this makes the little bastard all the more deadly.

Nemo

Anonymous said...

Shat should have been "Hot Zone" in the first line of the fourth paragraph. I reread that post twice and still missed it.

Nemo

Anonymous said...

Aesop,
An excellent serving of apocalypse porn...the best I've been exposed to. I agree with your assessments. If/when the US is widely visited by this outrage, several things will happen. The borders will be closed. International transportation will be curtailed. "Extraordinary powers" will be granted to the military and law enforcement. Insofar as they are able, people will flee from the large cities to the rural areas...where there will be conflict (The military restricting movement, notwithstanding). The military (vaccinated) will attempt to feed and control major population areas...with some success, but at the end of a bayonet. They also might keep the power grid up, as well as selected essential services (water, etc) to those major population centers.

Nuclear weapons might be used tactically.

Maybe even a nuclear war of opportunity.

Could 2000 cases in the US provide for such a scenario? The US has probably the best infrastructure to allow for containment, but the mobility of the population works against this asset. Maybe "too much freedom" is the ultimate vector.

Aesop said...

The point is, there is no infrastructure for containment.
The only thing that will work is draconian quarantines.

Observe what didn't happen in 2014 for how and why Ebola got here last time.

If common sense breaks out this (or any) time, I'll quite frankly be shocked and astonished.

Anonymous said...

I am curious to know your spitballing on an if/then situation concerning China. A cursory search reveals they have a metric f-ton of interests in Africa in general, and quite a bit in DRC. That means a pretty regular rotation of personnel.

In light of the fact that this is asymptomatic in 50% of the patients/carriers, until it's not, combined with the population density of China (greater than ours by half), odds are it would impact them quite severely. How long did it take them to cop to the incidence of avian flu?

I know, I know. It only takes one, and we have a serious situation with our border that is a conflagration waiting to happen. To mix it up, it may as well be as useful as a screen door on a submarine. I don't think we're the only ones in the mix, though.

-RJ

Fred ∆ said...

@Aesop

So where is the inconsistency between the CDC's recommendations and the summary of extant zoonotic research the 2014 articles Introduction which you copied and referenced in your link?

BTW, I'm molecular biologist; degreed, published and experienced in both field and lab handling of animal analogues of human pathogens and actual human pathogens. Those include mammalian cell cultured viruses, bacteria and eukaryotic infectious protozoa, their vectors and reservoir hosts.

By way of information, not Argument From Authority.

So you might consider straightening your finger off the trigger of that flamethrower of hyperbole connected to a tank of Ad Hominem lest you burn yourself. Again. On the exact same subject.

Anonymous said...

In the news this morning http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-first-large-group-from-africa-wades-across-rio-grande-into-us/ report from the Border Patrol of a large group of people from Africa caught crossing the border. Includes people from the Congo.

Aesop said...

@Fred ∆

Your dearth of information on the topic, detailed in my last response, belies your claimed expertise, which I'll stipulate as stated.
Tom Frieden had a far more impressive C.V. than you or I, and was head of the CDC in 2014.
And was nonetheless a five-star, world-class jackass on the topic of Ebola.

I work with jackass doctors, nurses, and other professionals every day.
I don't like it, but that's the breaks in a world where 50% of everyone graduated in the bottom half of their class.
I had a Head Attending whose attitude was in line with mine. He could unroll a literal scroll of professional certifications, publications, clinical research, etc. (and would, before his lectures). And then would state, in a roomful of his peers, "but if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, I'm still full of shit".

That's how it works in the world for grown-ups.

"Scientists think", "suspect", "have a hunch", "have formed a working hypothesis", and any 57 other variants of those phrases = "are guessing".

No value of it = "know". Ever.
Even if they guess correctly, until they can document it, it's still guessing.
Not to belabor the point, but if you're clinically published, you already know how that works, right?

"Scientists knew" that Copernicus was wrong abut heliocentrism, the Pope was right, and Galileo was a heretic.

"Eppur si muove."

That's what "scientists think" is worth in actual credibility. Jack, and Shit.

I know that at standard temperature, pressure, and Earth gravity, water will become ice at 32°F.
Not up for any further scientific debate.
Because it was documented, and can be confirmed with tedious repeatability, by every 4th grade science class, ad infinitum.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
That level of knowledge about Ebola's reservoir host, or any aspect of how it is actually passed from them to humans, is non-existent at present.

Science, at this point, is somewhere in a continuum along Edison's Lament:
"I haven't failed 1,000 times. I simply have discovered 1,000 ways not to make a functioning light bulb."

An informed guess is still a guess.
When you have published medical literature documenting the link you assert exists (which does not exist at this point in time, anywhere), give a holler.
Something a degreed, published, field- and lab-experienced molecular biologist should know without having his nose rubbed in it. Right?

Getting hissy about being man-handled over that doesn't demonstrate your expertise either. But kudos for getting back up.

Unfortunately, only one of us is right on this topic at the moment, and it isn't you. When that changes, I repeat, give a holler. The information is useful.

When they figure out where Ebola lives, and how it's transmitted, that will likely be quite helpful in curbing its outbreaks, in the same way finding out Yellow Fever was a mosquito-transmitted vector helped fuel wiping it out in the U.S.
(I'm assuming they covered this sort of thing when you were in school.)

Knowing the actual vector(s) for Ebola could help break the chain of infection, possibly forever (assuming a level of common sense notably generally absent in sub-Saharan Africa for some millennia).

But until then, assertions based on anecdotal fairytales aren't helping anyone.

Thus you're contributing nothing worthwhile on the subject.
Sorry about your butthurt, but if the situations were reversed, I'm sure you'd feel the same way, and perhaps you might have reconsidered starting a snark war to begin with. Your call, your loss.

And let's not misdirect; the inconsistency isn't with the CDC's recommendations, it's with their assertions, bereft as they are of any medical/clinical underpinning.

Once again, the technical term for what the CDC's website has done, versus the NIH extract I linked to, is "bullshitting".
The CDC has a long and distinguished record of bullshitting on the topic of Ebola.
I've documented it in depth, and at length, on this exact topic, on this very blog, going back some years. With some wee bit of color, and copious substantiating documentation. They have been universally king Of the fuckheads on Ebola, since just about ever, and particularly, the last time it came around.

They, their minions, and the halfwitted bullshitting they do by kneejerk reflex are directly responsible for two formerly practicing ICU nurses and current lifetime invalids in Dallas being infected with Ebola, probably for life, and having their lives ruined because their superiors listened to the CDC, instead of to the acknowledged Ebola expertise of Medicins Sans Frontieres, so tagging the CDC for their pig-headed hubris and unconscionable duplicity about things that might get me and a few hundred to thousands of my colleagues infected or killed, possibly this year or next, is a wee bit personal.

I'm sorry you're apparently not up to speed on that, but that's your problem, and not mine.
On the exact same subject.

Aesop said...

@RJ

I have no idea how long it took China to cop to avian flu.

For reference, they're amidst slaughtering pigs there now by the metric fuckton, which is going to affect the price of ham and bacon for you soon.

If Ebola gets to China, it's potentially worldwide in a day to a week.

That was the entire plot of Contagion.

The movie is about as accurate as Hollywood ever gets, and it's not far from reality on the major points, except on the Deus et machina vaccine ending.

We seem to have cracked that for real, four years later, but had the 2014 outbreak continued apace, that would have been two years after 80-90% of the planet was already dead.

Our chances for Ebola may be slightly better now.

That only leaves the other filoviruses, and twenty other pathogens, some we know, and some we don't know we don't know.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the Ebola update Aesop, I was looking for it. Yours seems to be the only site that cuts to the quick on this topic. MSM is unaware of Ebola, believes it's 'cured' or is too busy following the Kardashians to be of any use.

I am interested in your comments regarding Fed.Gov's response vis a vis a potential quarantine and other measures if Ebola pays us a visit this summer. In 2014 BHO seemed to have the attitude that it wasn't "fair" that only Africa had Ebola, not the U.S. He took no action to prevent flights from Africa landing in the U.S. with the result that a potentially exposed MD landed in JFK, was quarantined in NJ then broke quarantine even riding on the filthy NY subway.

There was also a potentially exposed RN from Africa who traveled back to her home in Maine. Although asymptomatic she was supposed to confine herself to home but went bicycle riding and traveled locally anyway. Both cases caused lots of controversy but nothing serious was done about two medical professionals breaking protocol.

With Trump in the WH I would hope he would take sterner measures quickly especially ending air travel with Africa. The southern border is another, different disaster of course. BHO was ineffective at everything so his casual attitude towards Ebola in 2014 at least was consistent. Trump takes a blowtorch to things that get his attention and that is what will be needed if Ebola comes knocking.

NE Heretic

Fred ∆ said...

Ebola is a mammalian RNA virus. It's not a bacterium that sporulates in times of nutrient impoverishment and lies dormant for decades in soil (anthrax). It's not multicellular protozoa with multiple stages that uses insect vectors for transmission to humans (african sleeping sickness, malaria, Chagas', leishmaniasis, filariasis). Mammalian viruses require mammalian cells to hijack and reproduce infectious particles. They are very stenotolerant with regards to temperature (37˙C), nutrient availability and quite particular about not killing their reservoir host in large enough numbers to exterminate themselves.

I am not about to doxx myself to the Fucknet with citations.

So for the sake of All That Is Holy, reading your own link:

As Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up":
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4166725/

USES CLIMATE STUDY TOOLS to predict vegetative cover and climate conditions to estimate fruit bat (it lists three exact species, from which Ebola has been isolated or seropositive from blood samples) and primate habitat. You can't discredit the entirety of virology by citing the politicization of stochastic climate modeling, it is a non sequitur. Why cite the study in the first place, unless it was simply to cut-and-paste pro forma weaseling to buttress your cynicism? Did you actually read and digest the article itself?

Most likely, yes science uses weasel words get used to it, fruit bats are reservoir hosts. A bat eats (saliva) fruit, drops it onto the forest floor where it's picked up by a primate and infected through saliva transfer. Could be urine or feces contamination as well. We use animal viral analogues, in this case Reston ebolavirus, to study the genus for obvious reasons.

Subsaharans eat fruit bats. They eat monkeys. They eat duikers. Ebola has been isolated from bats, apes, monkeys and duikers. Index cases in humans begin in areas with native Old World Fruit Bats positive for Ebola. The scientifically illiterate (!) humans engage in cultural practices that create sporadic epidemics of the same that burn hard and fast. We have experience with a similar disease called rabies. It is nearly 100% lethal once symptoms present, worldwide it claims 60,000 victims per year, 98% are dog bites. I live in an endemic area where bats are reservoir hosts, skunks, raccoons, foxes and coyotes are terminal hosts. I've received PEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) HDCV series for work outside the CONUS. It works. Offer me a choice of suffering about of Ebola or rabies, I'm picking Ebola.

Or make up your own theory. You've got plenty of creative talent there in Hollywood. Motaba anyone?

Just don't link to authoritative science articles on the subject that use the current Ebola transmission model to prove that all scientists are idiots while awaiting science to prove the actual transmission mechanism with science.

So back to my original point, this is what you call over reach at best:
We don't know in what species Ebola resides between outbreaks. Anywhere. Ever.
We don't know how it gets transmitted from them to humans.
No idea whatsoever.


No one is saying Ebola is akin to a head cold. The CDC was correct in its depiction summary of Transmission, its prior PR debacle not going unnoticed since that hospital is in my neighborhood. So is the RGV sector of the border. And rabies. And flu, Zika, Chikungunya, West Nile Virus, HIV, hepatitis A-Z, Mycobacterium leprae and tuberculosis, Trypanosoma cruzi, and so forth. Then there are mobile land mines like Crotalus atrox, desert centipedes, coral snakes, wood scorpions, meth heads, race warriors and know-it-all neurotics that purge their anxiety through fear mongering and superficial avocational epidemiology scaring the shit out of people because misery loves company.

Thanks for letting me play. Bye bye.

Anonymous said...

and late last week the BP sacked up 15 Congolese on the Texas border. contemplate that in its entirety.

Anonymous said...

"There are now 108 health workers infected with the virus, including two newly diagnosed workers from Kalunguta and Mabalako. Both had been vaccinated. Thirty-six health workers have died during this outbreak."

Interesting info from CIDRAP.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/05/experts-drc-ebola-outbreak-fueled-attacks

Anonymous said...

@ Anonymous 3:23PM. Just like magic shazaam! Now up to 20, cross-border into Nuevo Laredo.

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2019/04/15/congolese-migrants-monitored-for-ebola-along-texas-border-says-official/?fbclid=IwAR20uIYLkBoWudPMmwc3iyw0jYUi6iQVrbS9EhvOXx4iMZP_MjavUNnW5WU

'Course, it's only Breitbart. "Not real news", so they say.

-RJ

Aesop said...

Great, Fred, you can read. When it suits you.
But you have no evidence to cite in refutation, so you dig in and restate.
How well does that go over in the lab? Just wondering.

Ebola has been found in fruit bats.
And multiple other species.
That doesn't mean they are therefore the only species where it is found, nor (critical point) THE reservoir species, wherein it resides between outbreaks.

Nor do we know how it gets to humans, from wherever that may be.
The vector is wholly unknown.
If you knew different, you'd have pointed to that proof.
QED

"Most likely" isn't even close.

And that was the point.

"Or make up your own theory" is guesswork. Not even a hypothesis.
So is "it comes from infected meat of X, Y or Z."

Prove it: put up, or shut up.
The ironclad rule of actual science since ever.
Reproducibility.
When they do that, chime in with science, not guesses.
If it was so easy, surely someone would have put infected bat guano, and/or infected bat carcasses, etc. in a monkey cage, and demonstrated the transmission, and rushed to publish.
So where's that virological study???
Oh right, no place. After 45 years.
Maybe science was in the restroom or something? Since 2014, for sure.
Color me shocked.

You've confused Riley Poole's example from National Treasure with actual science:

"Albuquerque. See, I can do it too. Snorkel."

Just "making shit up" is how people die. And have.

It could be it's insect vectored. Like malaria, yellow fever, or plague.
But publishing that as fact is something nobody with a lick of sense would do.
Demonstrate it in clinical studies over and over again, and we can talk.

Until then, your statements are on the level of claims about the ethersphere, phlogiston, and Piltdown man, and you're just a butthurt cement-head with an attitude and delusions of competence, because you got called out for your inaccurate and anti-scientific fucktardery on a concept that seventh graders can routinely grasp, and which someone should have covered for you in Intro To Science long about middle school.

And the CDC didn't just have a PR problem.
E.g.:
"Ebola will never get here."
"We'll detect it and screen it out."
"Any hospital can handle it if it does get here."
"Our protocols will prevent it from spreading."
0 for fucking 4, sport. The Smartest Guys On The Subject.
They got two people needlessly infected with that jackassery, with full precautions, in exactly 21 days.
Just like Ebola does unassisted, in Africa, for 40+ years.
IOW, putting the CDC on the case is the functional equivalent of doing nothing, and slam dancing with Ebola-riddled bloody corpses.

So leave your amateur psychoanalysis to professionals, and go play with your slides and microscope.

And thanks for showing your ass, despite yards of rope with which to not hang yourself, in three out of three attempts.
Walk tall.

A suspicious person would guess that you must work for the CDC.
I just figure you're an asshole.

Aesop said...

@RJ:

Based on direct and lengthy personal experience, you should know that the Border Patrol catches about 3% of actual crossers, on its best days.

That makes Congolese refugees a lot like kitchen cockroaches: if you found 20, there are 600. So where are the other 580 they missed?

The other thing to remember is that any "monitoring" more than likely, consists of monitoring those apprehended for fever.

No, really.

Not running Ebola blood tests, or anything like, in a timely manner.
And they're probably not monitoring the 17-50 CBP agents who apprehended, transported, and processed those detainees, at close range, with no protective equipment other than maybe standard exam gloves, for some of them.

And, of course, nothing whatsoever will be going on to investigate the 500-5000 contacts on the Mexican side of the line, or any intervening flight from Africa to N. America, unless or until 500 people in Nuevo Laredo and elsewhere suddenly show up at the hospitals shooting blood out both ends and their eyeballs.

What could possibly go wrong?

Anonymous said...

This I know, with no small dread. I used to monitor border field cameras in my spare time that were set up by private individuals. The first instance I knew of crowdsourcing.

I lived in south TX and regularly worked in three of the border towns. With the public, oh joy. Eye witness and experience with how things were handled there, and I doubt the efficiency (this was years post 9/11) has improved since. Cripes, I caught Whooping Cough as an adult - didn't know we needed boosters - while I was there. Yehaw.

-RJ

Anonymous said...

"I lived in south TX and regularly worked in three of the border towns. . . I caught Whooping Cough as an adult - didn't know we needed boosters - while I was there. . . "

I believe you now have lifetime immunity to whooping cough, you got it the hard way though.

NE Heretic

dmv gringo said...

VIDEO: ‘First large group’ from AFRICA wades across Rio Grande into US

http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-first-large-group-from-africa-wades-across-rio-grande-into-us/

Anonymous said...

Hey Aesop, I was sharing the details of this blog post with my trophy bride and she had nightmares. I did 6 years in the USN 73 to 79 and learned a lot. I then did 28 years in a major Aerospace Company and learned a lot more. I'm confused by one of your responses. Why are you building concertina fences? Exactly what/who are you trying to stop? It sounds like you want to stop zombies, but that doesn't look like ebola to me????????

Unknown said...

Michael Crichton should write a book of how a Goodall-esque character gets humped by the 'rillas in her cozy little commune. Goodzillas are spawned. Title it, hmmm, how does Reservoir Host sound?

Anonymous said...

There is a school of thought, probably correct in my opinion, that the black death which ravaged Europe was similar to Ebola. https://pmj.bmj.com/content/postgradmedj/81/955/315.full.pdf

George True said...

@Anonymous: Similar perhaps in that vast numbers of people died, but I would think that any similarity would end there. After all, both bubonic plague and the follow-on pneumonia plague can be easily and effectively cured with antibiotics, which of course did not exist in the Middle Ages.

George True said...

Pneumonic plague, not pneumonia plague. Damn smart phone changes what I said all the time.

horsewithnonick said...

He will first have to come back from his unfortunate demise in 2008.

brinster said...

Good news! 116 migrants from Africa have been apprehended at the Rio Grande border. A few from the Congo. Open borders can kill.

June J said...

Rays of sunshine upon returning from a weekend away with the wife....the PTB (and most of the people on the internet) will not take your warnings seriously until cases go from 1 to 100 in the US.

lineman said...

To give you standoff distance...If droplets can't reach you then you can't get infected...Come on did you really not understand that...

Tina said...

I've read here before, but this is my first post I think. So: Hello! :-) If my questions have been covered in previous posts or comment threads, please point me there, I don't mind reading but haven't noticed a discussion of dogs and Ebola (EVD).

I've read the study that showed that dogs are commonly infected with Ebola but aren't made ill - or at least not ill enough to die - so they have antibodies but don't get EVD. I've also seen where CDC and regular media articles downplay the possibility of dogs as carriers. As mentioned above, the "reservoir" has to be in an animal or creature that is not killed by the disease.

Today, I found a report from 2015 that dog meat was possibly linked to the 2015 outbreak in Liberia.

I first became concerned about dogs and Ebola during the Dallas TX outbreak. I don't in any way mean to downplay the *human* risks of it coming here, as happened i Dallas or through bringing sick people or survivors who can still transmit the disease (as we now know - indefinitely and not only through sex). They were blessedly able to contain it in Dallas, despite many mistakes, not least of which was hosing off the vomit on the sidewalks. But "what if" the nurse's pet dog had caught Ebola. Since dogs are asymptomatic, we'd never know. And if it were to escape into our canine populations we'd never be able to rid the continent of the disease.

I'm not a scientist nor do I have any medical background so I'm trying to understand why "a role" for dogs (or even cats) in transmission or latent harboring of Ebola Virus is sort of impatiently waived away. One would think at least the pet activists would want to protect beloved animals from this risk, but nope. So maybe I'm missing something. Have there been other studies that show there is nothing to worry about?


Aesop said...

Tina,

1) Welcome.
2) I have no idea about dogs and cats harboring, being affected by, or being a vector for Ebola. Just haven't even looked there.
3) It may indeed be a problem.
4) "Weasel words" in scientific literature, as noted earler, are simply lazy scientists shrugging and saying "Beats the $#!^ out of me!"
5) You would think Purina and fifty other pet product companies would be paying for more information regarding pets vs. Ebola.
They may have already, but I don't inhabit the veterinary world much.

There may already be more such veterinarian studies, in which case I defer to people in that neighborhood of the medical arts.

If I run across more info in my internet wanderings, I'll include it in future updates.

Anonymous said...

"The DRC topped 1,000 cases on Mar 24—8 months into the outbreak. It added its second 1,000 cases in only 71 days, or just a little over 2 months later, data that demonstrate how the outbreak has accelerated."


http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2019/06/ebola-hits-2000-cases-vaccine-okd-some-pregnant-lactating-women

Aesop said...

1000 to 2000 is pointless, as will be 2000 to 3000, or 3000 to 4000.

The key to this, or any outbreak, is how fast it's doubling.
Which data actually shows it's slowing down, not speeding up. Yet.
(I.e., it doubled four times on the first day, and two more within 48 hours. If it continued at that pace, 80% of the planet would have been dead by early last September.)

Put another way:
I'll pay you $1000/mo, increasing that amount by $1000/mo.
If you'll pay me $1/mo, doubling that amount each subsequent month.
Do we have a deal...?

Because in Month 2, you get $2000, I get $2.
But by Month 24, I'll be paying you $25,000.
You'll be paying me $1,000,000.

That's why the speed of the doubles matter, not how fast it skips from 1000s, which focuses on the eleventh doubling, while ignoring the ten that preceded it, or the even worse ten doublings that follow it.

Verstehen sie?

Tina said...

Thank you, Aesop! Appreciate your response. :-)

Anonymous said...

@ George True

The point is that the Black Death was not the bubonic plague. Contemporary records describe a haemorrhagic fever with epidemiology and characteristics quite similar to modern ebola.

Jester said...

If Ebola or not is going to wipe us out, I don't know but the point being is that something along the lines of Ebola is either an international flight or a slight mutation away from really bringing on the feared Apocalypse. Mind you I work for the VA health care side and they still in many locations have up if you've traveled to X areas in the past 21 days please tell your provider. Or is it 14? Does it matter at that point kids? Say someone is infectious for half of that with out really providing any symptoms? Talking a 7 to 12ish day minimum. That's what likely a best case scenario? That's a long fucking time to come in contact with dozens if not hundreds/thousands of people. Even out here in Wyoming you will contact a lot of people. Just imagine one person coming back from somewhere where they contacted Ebola or really anything else like it. How many trips to the grocery stores, department stores, hardware stores, work (Like say a hospital or other situation where you deal with people face to face[to include other co-workers and customers]) or even sending out packages/letters will someone have done before they are found out to be infectious? Those nice packages of beef or perhaps some nice tomatoes that you selected? Touched by someone infected and now you're bringing it home let along having grabbed it physically. @Aesop works in the healthcare sector. Ask -anyone- that has more than five minutes working inside a health care facility what the flu can do to an inpatient ward or say a long term care facility. What happens when you have staff that come down with something? Anyone work in education see elementary though high schools see what happens with 10 percent of the staff/students get infected with some virus? That's with stuff we know how it's transmitted, and in the case of hospitals have the ability to clean, sanitize and monitor people hourly or better and you still see something go in and seriously screw up entire wards of hospitals. I'm not just talking about the patients, I'm talking about the staff that ends up not showing up to work because they are puking their guts out. (And likely passing off whatever to family members who also pass it off wherever they get to go.) This is all for some very simple stuff generally speaking. Not Ebola which at least thankfully has largely been contained to the shit holes in Africa where not thousands of people move in and out of every day. If Ebola is not the problem, (Which I think it is of a grave concern) something else will be that does hit an area of the world more people care about.

Grog said...

Here's a link for what brinster mentioned.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/06/very-large-group-of-african-migrants-wade-across-the-rio-grande-into-us-video/

Phelps said...

There is an effective vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV. Maybe you should consider getting it now before Ebola Chan wigs you out completely.

Just because the zombies can't zombify you personally doesn't mean you get to ignore the zombie apocalypse.

Loco Gato said...

As predicted

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2019/06/04/large-groups-of-african-migrants-illegally-crossed-texas-border-say-feds/

rder Patrol agents in the Del Rio Sector encountered their second large group of African migrants illegally crossing the border near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Saturday. This group of 37 African migrant families, followed quickly behind a group of 116 African migrants who crossed on Friday.

Anonymous said...

Voluntary isolation early is the only defense.

Unknown said...

https://local2455.com/featured/congolese-migrants-monitored-for-ebola-along-the-laredo-texas-border-says-official/

yachtsecurity said...

https://truemedian.com/2019/06/04/dr-congo-ebola-outbreak-more-than-2000-cases-reported-bbc-news/

Saw the headline on BBC this morning...

Aesop said...

Then they're behind the curve, as usual.
It topped 2000 nearly a month ago (5/12/19).
It's currently north of 2300 cases.

Marina said...

Ebola in mainstream news: The UK leftist Guardian: DRC Ebola cases pass 2,000, prompting call for 'total reset'--- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/03/drc-set-to-exceed-2000-ebola-cases-in-second-largest-outbreak-ever??utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&utm_campaign=2019-0605-GLOBAL-NSDAY&utm_content=NSDAY

Aesop said...

From that article:
"Aid agencies, infectious disease experts and the WHO say it will be very hard to bring this outbreak under control, even though they have had vaccines and experimental drugs from the outset.

There is almost no functioning state in much of eastern DRC and an almost total lack of basic services such as power, education, roads or healthcare. The authority of the government only extends to the edges of urban areas.
"

This is 2014 redux.
WHO is saying in their published reports "We've got this", everyone else is saying "This sh*t's an out of control inferno!"

90 days later we had Ebola in Dallas.

This is also the first official acknowledgement that officially published numbers no longer reflect reality.

That's admitting that things are a full-blown disaster.

Best start getting your sh*t together, people.
This one's going to blow containment.

Don Parker said...

I've been following this outbreak for several months now, and it scares both my wife and me, to the extent that we are prepping for a period of isolation. One problem has been that I'm the primary breadwinner for us, and I work in another state. I'm not quite ready to formally quit, as my client is working on some things that might help the US win a war in the South China Sea.
But with this update, and a post over at Bayou Renaissance Man, we decided that I'm coming home every weekend to get as much done as possible before the balloon goes up. We're stuck in a NE suburb of Cincinnati, and there is no realistic way to leave. We decided back in 2014, during the last outbreak, that we would take our chances here, given my increasing health problems.
I doubt we'll last long if things really get sporty, and quite frankly we are hoping for the return of Christ. But if He tarries, we'll do the best we can with what we have. Neither of us will go into the cattle cars without a fight, feeble as it may be. Our version of the Word says to sell your cloaks and buy a sword made by Armalite...
I'm too much of a professional in my work to just up and quit my client; my contract is scheduled to end in late September, and I was going to come off the road to spend the rest of my days writing, being with my "starter" wife of nearly 40 years, and providing a lap for the 5 cats that comprise our family. But I'm letting the client and my agency now that come the first case of Ebola in the US, I'm gone, heading for home.
Thank you, Aesop, for an interesting site that's entertaining as well as being informative. Good luck and God Bless you and yours if things get sporty.

Anonymous said...

Aesop: "I have no idea how long it took China to cop to avian flu."

The details are found in a well-researched book that you and all fans of this blog will undoubtedly find informative- The China Syndrome by Karl Taro Greenfeld, published in 2007 by Harper Collins. https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060587239/china-syndrome/

I doubt that you'll find it a bore to read.

"For reference, they're amidst slaughtering pigs there [China] now by the metric fuckton, which is going to affect the price of ham and bacon for you soon."

tangential reminder: you may be aware that a Chinese company now owns Smithfield Hams, originally headquartered in Virginia, USA. As of around 5 years ago. Among the advantages of that purchase: a handy means of parallel processing, for the food supply of China.

Anonymous said...

As if that weren't enough, my visit to the HarperCollins website this morning also found another book catching my eye: Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, by Kris Newby. https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062896278/bitten/
Recently published, all of three weeks ago.

While I can confidently endorse Taro Greenfeld's book as well-researched and documented (however confusingly titled), I'm withholding judgement on this one until I read it, eh.

A bit of a digression there. carry on.

Anonymous said...

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2019/06/06/500-african-migrants-apprehended-since-may-30-in-single-border-patrol-sector/

Per Breitbart, so take it with a grain of salt, but the numbers keep increasing rapidly...and drastically...I firmly believe Aesop when he says, this will blow containment, and then, as so many others have said, things get sporty.

The most aggravating thing is, I have tried warning those closest to me, and no one wants to hear it, sad, I'll mourn them...and move on.

Anonymous said...

Commenter above about whooping cough. Don't know about the lifetime immunity. I do know anyone coming into contact with an infant is to get a booster vaccine.

Quickly graphed the numbers from the article and the numbers plus 50%. The straight numbers show a slight slow down but still increasing. Plus 50% shows liner progression with no loss in rate.

This ought to be *fun* to watch.

What really bothers me is the historical record that TPTB like to tell as little as possible and things are always far worse than they'll admit. Interesting times.

And once again, many thanks to Aesop for the straight poop that can be had no where else (unless you know this stuff well enough to separate the wheat from the chaff AND have the time to due the detective work).

Anonymous said...

“A group of about 350 migrants from the Congo will be arriving in San Antonio in the near future,” a notice from the San Antonio Department of Human Services reads.

Anonymous said...

BREAKING: City confirms hundreds of migrants from the Congo have arrived in SA. The city is in desperate need for French speaking volunteers. @kens5 #kens5 pic.twitter.com/YGhhG3ewR0

Anonymous said...

So, what if one is traveling to Rwanda in the near future? Should I seek vaccination, just in case? AFAIK, Rwanda has been monitoring their borders, but it is close to the area of infection (50 - 75 miles as the crow flies).

Aesop said...

1) Rwanda: Why?!?
2) The vaccine is not available to you. Period.
It's still experimental, and is unauthorized for human use nor distributed anywhere but in the active outbreak zone, and then only to people who have been a) directly exposed to an active case or b) are medical staff working within the Ebola Outbreak Hot Zone amidst the active cases, and for both only on humanitarian grounds.
Your chances of securing the vaccination are thus likely to be Jack, and Shit.

Were you to attempt to bribe someone in Congo for it, they would likely take your money, and inject you with bat piss, or some other pseudo-equivalent, and laugh about taking your money.

bobbookworm said...

Containment is offically blown...1st reported case in Uganda...a 5 yr old who was caught by a checkpoint at the border but the family snuck around it by trail and wound up in in kagando hospital in kasese uganda (pop 100k) abt 40 miles from border

Anonymous said...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/ebola-makes-much-feared-jump-uganda

Anonymous said...

This is the first time I have ever heard of large numbers of Congolese presenting themselves for asylum at the US Southern Border. Perhaps because dirt poor folks from Africa have a hard tome getting here, what with that whole Atlantic ocean thing, and now "coincidentally" just as the DRC is infected with an Ebola strain that is harder to detect than previously and has a 21 day period between infection and death.

It is almost as if someone with financial (and other) resources was deliberately trying to bring the virus to the Americas and specifically the US.

Doorgunner said...

Commmon sense isn't. It's actually as common as chicken lips. Anything you hear from any government agency is class A CYA. AKA: Bullshite.

Anonymous said...

Deference to op, some wonderful selective information.